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If AoC is growing, how are supporters of the game going to explain the revenue loss coming on May 15
LitigatorAB
Member Posts: 36
I've seen on the main boards (the boards where only active subscribers can post) that AoC subscriptions (in their view) are up above 200,000, and might even be around 280,000.
Now I have a question about this:
200,000 subscribers would mean, at $15 a pop, 9 million dollars in revenue for a quarter. Yet Funcom's revenue for Q1 isn't going to be anywhere near that. And that would assume that Funcom doesn't earn a SINGLE dollar from Anarchy Online or for any box sales. Lol. Of course with average subscriptions being more than $15, and because Funcom has other sources of revenue, subscription are far below this. If Funcom comes in above guidance you might convince me they have 150,000 subscriptions. Instead, don't be surprised when the number is closer to 6.5 million dollars US.
And if that is the current population (instead of the retroactive population Jan-March) , when Funcom gives its guidance, how will supporters explain the guidance coming in a few million dollars short?
This is simple math folks.
Lit
Comments
Who the heck is insane enough to think funcom has 200k-300k subscribers :S
Funcom still have some revenues from AO afaik, but that isn't the biggest if numbers.
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
No one should explain anything to you Litigator
People who enjoy Age of Conan will be playing it and if someone notice new players in the server he/she plays he/she will express it here to share it with people who also enjoy the game and have a good time, maybe build a good community too.
People who have a good time in a MMO will not care about those numbers, it will not change the experiences they have ingame, if you are so obsessed about an answer, send this message to Funcom, they are the only ones who should care about what you said, if it is real.
...
If someone decides to support a game by not defending the content, but instead highlighting the game's growth, then it is fair game.
Fact is, a lot of people make their MMO buying decisions based on a growing community. It is Funcom's best interests to release a meme into the gaming community that the game is growing. But in the interest of actual gamers, if such rumours are false, they deserve to be outed.
And unfortunately for Funcom, its balance sheet does not lie.
Litigator, I can be wrong, but it seems AOC players "defend" or talk about the game talking about its content, graphics, music, classes and atmosphere, usually people who are "against" the game are the ones talking about numbers.
...
Could you link this information? As the company is publicly traded, and you seem to already have this information, could you share that?
Thanks
I can tell you that the populations on the servers I play on are growing, the current state on the EU servers etc Im not sure on. I also could care less about Sub#s. Set,Wiccana,Tyranny,Cimmeria are all very healthy and growing and would provide newcomers with whatever grouping/guild activities they would want to be involved with.
If the populations are high enough to have a few servers for each ruleset (for US) then thats all I care about really. I don't need 75 servers just like mine to have a good time.
If Funcom does continue to lose money, AoC will lose resources etc, thats the only reason it sometimes worries me... but then again, Aion will be out before thats a concern.
this....don't understand why people care what others play or how well their game does. If the game is fun for the player, then it doesnt matter what anyonelse thinks
AoC do seems to be growing but nowhere near that speed, 280K is far to much.
But and that is a big but, the thing that got them most of the new players are probably the free trial they finally got going and that was just a month ago so it wont really affect that report very much.
Personally I think AoC is somewhere between 125K and 200K.
Fail post.
Ok let's talk about simple math. According Litigator a bad first quarter means a loss of subscribers? In that case Activision's analyst are reporting a first quarter earnings per share of .03 cents compared to .12 for last year that is a 25% loss!
Does that mean WoW is doing bad or losing 75% of its subscribers? No.
There are ALOT of factors in business when it comes to guidance and revenue, please learn how to read a company's balance sheet, cash flow sheet, and income statement before making an absurd forecast on any company. Everything from debt due to stockholder Equity plays a major factor in a company's revenue for a quarter.
We are in a global economic downfall. Companies that are doing amazing and exceeded analysts' growth expectations still had their stock prices plummeted by the economy panic. It doesn't mean that they are doing bad, it just means they are a victim of panic.
I am not saying Funcom is or isn't lying
I am just saying YOUR MATH is wrong and generic. Link me Funcom's balance sheet, cash flow statement, income statement and conference call between the board of directors and shareholders AND THEN I WILL BELIEVE YOU.
Without knowing what form of accounting Funcom uses you can't even begin to make a generic statement such as the original post.
I can tell you that the populations on the servers I play on are growing, the current state on the EU servers etc Im not sure on. I also could care less about Sub#s. Set,Wiccana,Tyranny,Cimmeria are all very healthy and growing and would provide newcomers with whatever grouping/guild activities they would want to be involved with.
If the populations are high enough to have a few servers for each ruleset (for US) then thats all I care about really. I don't need 75 servers just like mine to have a good time.
If Funcom does continue to lose money, AoC will lose resources etc, thats the only reason it sometimes worries me... but then again, Aion will be out before thats a concern.
From what I have seen on Fury EU server the population is growing, wouldn't say by huge amounts but I do see many new names in chat and such.
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
I don't really know the numbers myself but I'm seeing a huge spike in population numbers on my two servers. My guild has grown quite a large bit over the last 2 months. PVP seems to be picking up quite a bit. This is of course my opinion.
I'm not an AoC player, but who pays for the 1-month sub price on any MMO anymore? I would assume that the 3 month sub price is about $13-$14 a month and the 6 month sub even less? So, the $15 month figure is always a tad unrealistic.
Also, keep in mind that FunCom had a revenue increase of about 33M over the past year. (investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp)
Now, if your talking about earnings (net profit) - yeah .. the company is being hit hard. They are now being taxed at a higher rate because of the increased revenue, they have a very large operations expense and have a bit of debt. 33M per year when spread between the government, payroll, operations, IT and creditors is not very much when you think about it.
There is much, much more on whether a company is sucessful or not than the product or service it sells.
Not sure if this matters but the european sub costs 15 euro. That's a good 19.5 dollars. Not sure if US or EU has more players but that should make even more than 9 million dollars.
Fail post.
Ok let's talk about simple math. According Litigator a bad first quarter means a loss of subscribers? In that case Activision's analyst are reporting a first quarter earnings per share of .03 cents compared to .12 for last year that is a 25% loss!
Does that mean WoW is doing bad or losing 75% of its subscribers? No.
There are ALOT of factors in business when it comes to guidance and revenue, please learn how to read a company's balance sheet, cash flow sheet, and income statement before making an absurd forecast on any company. Everything from debt due to stockholder Equity plays a major factor in a company's revenue for a quarter.
We are in a global economic downfall. Companies that are doing amazing and exceeded analysts' growth expectations still had their stock prices plummeted by the economy panic. It doesn't mean that they are doing bad, it just means they are a victim of panic.
I am not saying Funcom is or isn't lying
I am just saying YOUR MATH is wrong and generic. Link me Funcom's balance sheet, cash flow statement, income statement and conference call between the board of directors and shareholders AND THEN I WILL BELIEVE YOU.
Without knowing what form of accounting Funcom uses you can't even begin to make a generic statement such as the original post.
I'm still waiting for the balance sheet, income statement, cashflow statement, and conference call between the board and shareholders. The OP has quoted that the "balance sheet doesn't lie" but I have yet to see him show a link.
And while we are at it please tell me the form of accounting Funcom has used that guided your balance sheet analysis. I do this for a living. I know how to calculate debt due, stockholder equity, and international exchange rate, etc.
I'm tired of seeing people lie and make false accusations on games just to start a troll/flame war on a game they dislike. Yes, I was very upset when AoC launched and they misled their fanbase. I made a few posts here & there and just stopped giving Funcom my money. Recently I tried AoC again and was very impressed with all the modifications they made. I still hate the use of instances, but I applaud their effort. It could be worse, it would be Guild Wars (I have no idea how people consider that a MMO).
I recently played Darkfall, I was double billed, dealt with horrendous customer support, seen many hackers/exploiters, encounterd numerous bugs, and encountered the worse player community ever (think about Barrens chat on steroids) and you don't see me making some topic bashing the game nonstop. There are already enough topics like that, I just added my 2 cents here and there to them all with FACTS.
The bottomline is that server pop is mere speculation.
Who cares, if there is people enjoying the game then let them. As a consumer, when I browse the forum as research for a new game, I already know that server population is nothing but speculation when stated by users. And even if the company itself told me "hey we have 1 million subs" I am still weary as we all have been lied to by gaming companies before (EQ2, AoC, Darkfall, etc etc).
So give it a break already and stop fighting lies with more lies.
Does that include VAT?
Funcom will present 1 q figures on May 15th. Until then we dont know anything more than what was presented on February 23. So there is no info available at the moment except for insider.
Financial calendar
http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=223874
Feb 23 presentation (4quarter figures, e.g. 31 december 2008)
http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=229408
Litigator AB came in before the 4q results and started bashing Funcom financials on these forums. My guess then was that he has som alterior motive. Either to short sell the stock or to buy cheap now and sell after the presentation
Note that Funcom stock is currently traded at about cash levels, meaning that if you buy Funcom at the current price you get a lot of cash and the rest of the organisation + all the games, for FREE! The reason for this is ofcourse the enormous dissapoitment AoC was to the market. They were hoping for a million subs while they now have priced the company as AoC has no subscribers. Guess what, if the 1q figures and guidance comes in above expectations (which are extremely low) then the stock will soar.
edit spelling
edit the nick stuff, mistake
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
eh my opinion is population is pretty flat. Probably gaining some with the trials and losing some from boredom but overall I think the population is pretty close to what it was at the end of November.
I am also curious to see the May report, but the one in November will be far more interesting I would think.
I miss DAoC
Looking forward to the report 15. may. That would be 1quarter 09?
For the revenue part you have to exlude the boxsales, income from plutolife and AO income.
When analyzing the the income to determine at what range subscriberbase of AoC is you must also take into considiration that the growth/decline in subs may have comed in late quarter and you prob just will find average for the 3 months in 1q. And we do not know how much of the subscriber cost goes to funcom and what do get scimmed off on the way(shared billing system)
I remember at one point pre launch they hypothesized they would need 150K for the game to be profitable. So my guess is that with the cutting of servers plus staff layoffs and other cuts they are in a slow bleed mode or at best barely breaking even with the player base they have. As Lit points out this will be a interesting report, I myself am wondering if they will survive the next quarter. If Secret World hits the bowl with a splash the companies future does not look too bright.
This after all is a small company not a huge corporate conglomerate like SOE which can use it's MMO's as tax writeoffs for it's more profitable ventures.
I miss DAoC
I remember at one point pre launch they hypothesized they would need 150K for the game to be profitable. So my guess is that with the cutting of servers plus staff layoffs and other cuts they are in a slow bleed mode or at best barely breaking even with the player base they have. As Lit points out this will be a interesting report, I myself am wondering if they will survive the next quarter. If Secret World hits the bowl with a splash the companies future does not look too bright.
This after all is a small company not a huge corporate conglomerate like SOE which can use it's MMO's as tax writeoffs for it's more profitable ventures.
They deserve to go out of business after all the problems they pass along to there costmers and very poor support.
MAGA
The bill in US dollars, Euros and Pouds sterling as far as I know and with multiple month subs it will be a hard push working out what the figure is as they can hide a lot of things in currency conversion rates, as they will have to state the money in Norweigan Krona even if the money hasn't been changed and is still in what every currency it is.
Unless they quote numbers (unlikely) then you can only get a very rough idea.
They make good games, so they will stay in business. You know one day they might learn how to handle the small and vocal group of customers that keep bashing them on these forums.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Plutolife stopped being a FC asset quite a few ago, also the last quarter's report stated that then they received the final part of initial box sales from Eidos.
Subscribers using multiple month subs also count for less thna 15/month, and have bigger payments ever few months, while not paying anything on the rest, is not that easy to estimate subs properly but there should be enough to have a rough idea.
<Mod Edit>I think the most relavent piece of information for AOC players will be the 'employees' section.
In their last report in February, they said they decreased overall employees from 319 to 302, and at the same time, they said they increased the number of people working on Secret World.
This means there was a pretty drastic decrease in people working on AOC... which means slower bug fixes and much slower addition of new content, which is basically what we've seen over the past 8 months (very little new content).
I've said it before, one of the things that kept me subscribing to AOC was the 'hope' for the future. As funcom continues to cut staff for AOC, the odds of my hope actually coming to the game is disappearing. Even one of the biggest supporters of this game posted a thread about quitting because the slow rate of bug fixes.
Hey Bryan, Just to point out FC has over 120 ppl working on AoC (last reported), that is far more than most other companies have working on a live team, so in the grand scheme things there are fine, if a bit on the top side. I don't think it is fair to judge number of staff when we can directly compare to Mythic, Blizzard, Turbine to name a few, with only one of those companies having a higher reported amount of devs in their live games. If you take a quick peek at funcom.com you will see they are staffing up for TSW seperately.
As for Openedge which I am sure your reffering to, the bulk of his issues are with a test client and not released client as pointed out by himself. Screen Res issues and mouse pointer issues primarily whilst testing DX10.
As for the figures and representation, Lit is also one that never divulges his sources and can never back anything up as he puts across as "inside info" that he is only privvy to.
Also take into consideration that Litigators "sources" told him apparently the free trial for AoC was coming in May. Amongst all the other inside info he pertains to have, posted (got deleted) and never came to fruition.
There is no workings out to the format and frequency of box sale income Funcom receives from Eidos (will be Square Enix soon, but still under the Eidos name which stays as part of the deal) (again caught the guessers out in the past) The amount of money that Funcom pays their publisher per subscriber, it's rate and whether it varies - which is something never accurately figured into the assumptions of past but happens as fact to name a few things.
You have to understand too that you looking at it from AoC players perspective, Lit is not, motives are unclear and cloudy. There is nothing wrong with predictions and the like, but the average AoC player will tell you that several quartley reports have come and gone and the only change is the game keeps on getting better as there is tangible evidence from playing it.
Lit is articulate and presents his guesses well, at the end of the day, they are just guesses.